Psychoid

1. Etymology

Psychoid is a modern scientific adjective built on Greek psychē (ψυχή)—soul, life, mind—plus the suffix -oid (“like, resembling”). It names what is psyche-like without being fully available as conscious psychic content. Jung uses it for a border region where psyche and organic life touch, and for the archetype considered as such—beyond what can be made present as an image.

Related forms: psychoid unconscious; psychoid process; German psychoid. Not a synonym for “psychological” in ordinary speech.

2. Plain summary

Psychoid is Jung’s word for a deep layer where mind and body are two sides of one coin—and for the fact that the real nature of an archetype cannot be hauled fully into daylight.

Think of instinct running so deep that it never becomes a clear thought, or of a pattern that shapes dreams and symptoms without ever showing its “thing in itself.” Between blind instinct and free choice there is conflict; where instinct rules, psychoid processes begin—elements of the unconscious that consciousness cannot take up. Jung also calls the archetype transcendent in that sense: not because it is a religious doctrine, but because its real nature cannot be made conscious.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common psychoid-related figures and motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
psychoid as psyche–matter connection; psychoid unconscious (inaccessible layer); neither wholly psychological nor wholly physiological; mind/body / psychic–organic single coin; spectrum of the archetype (infra-red instinctual pole / ultra-violet imagistic–spiritual pole); archetype as such vs archetypal image; irrepresentable regulating principle; transcendent (not fully makeable-conscious); psychoid processes where instinct predominates; elements incapable of consciousness; conflict of blind instinct and will; relation to collective unconscious topography; complex and symptom as surface weather over deeper psychoid ground; shadow / anima images as representable poles, not the psychoid “as such”; individuation as living relation to what cannot be fully known; CW 8 On the Nature of the Psyche as house locus family (pending stamps).

3. Academic elucidation

4. Lexicon

Psychoid. A concept applicable to virtually any archetype, expressing the essentially unknown but experienceable connection between psyche and matter. … Where instinct predominates, psychoid processes set in which pertain to the sphere of the unconscious as elements incapable of consciousness.

It seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on which account I call it psychoid.

(Sharp, 1991, p. [provisional — unverified])

The idea of the psychoid unconscious was first put forward by Jung in 1946. … (1) a level of, or in, the unconscious which is completely inaccessible to consciousness. (2) … properties in common with the organic world; … neither wholly psychological nor wholly physiological. (3) … An archetype can be depicted as a spectrum, ranging from an ‘infra-red’, physiological, instinctual pole to an ‘ultra-violet’ spiritual or imagistic pole.

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

If I make use of the term “psychoid” I do so with three reservations: firstly, I use it as an adjective, not as a noun; secondly, no psychic quality in the proper sense of the word is implied, but only a “quasi-psychic” one such as the reflex-processes possess; and thirdly, it is meant to distinguish a category of events from merely vitalistic phenomena on the one hand and from specifically psychic processes on the other.

Where instinct predominates, psychoid processes set in which pertain to the sphere of the unconscious as elements incapable of consciousness.
(Jung, 1947/1969, CW 8, p. 243, ¶380)

The archetype as such is a psychoid factor that belongs, as it were, to the invisible, ultraviolet end of the psychic spectrum. … It seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on which account I call it psychoid.
(Jung, 1947/1969, CW 8, p. 277, ¶417)

Just as the “psychic infra-red,” the biological instinctual psyche, gradually passes over into the physiology of the organism … so the “psychic ultra-violet,” the archetype, describes a field which exhibits none of the peculiarities of the physiological and yet, in the last analysis, can no longer be regarded as psychic.
(Jung, 1947/1969, CW 8, p. 280, ¶420)

See also: archetype; individuation; complex; shadow; anima; active imagination. (Queued — not yet linked: self, ego.)

References

Jung, C. G. (1969). On the nature of the psyche. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 8, pp. 234–235, 243, 277, 280, ¶¶368, 380, 417, 420). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1947; German revised 1954 note-only)

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts. Inner City Books.